[P] restless, breathless

[Antiope]

antiope

forever may you reign
forever may you reign

T

he prairie is expansive, stretching over rolling hills and grasses whipping in the wind and disappearing just past her line of sight. Antiope thinks, perhaps, that she can see the sun glinting off Vitreus Lake in the distance, but it could be a trick of the light. The girl of shadows and stripes stands with her back to the court, her draping mass of hair tied into heavy buns. A few stray strands dance with the air as it brushes along her sides.

The prairie is expansive, and spring is the first that Antiope has seen it unoccupied by equines and events and excitement. Now, she intends to cross it. Which doesn’t sound like such a feat, but she isn’t planning for it to take more than a few minutes. That is the real trick here.

Ever since arriving to this place, her magic has been strangled. Weak.

Antiope intends to challenge it.

She takes in a deep breath, filling her lungs as if it were the first time, when she was released from the marble she had been carved of. The blue of her eyes become slits in the mask of darkness across her face. She waits. One heartbeat, two heartbeats. Three. And then she begins to run. Even unaided, her speed is impressive. She is lithe and agile and predatory, and her muscles ripple beneath the white and earth of her skin. Her hooves kick up dirt and grass and soil. But this, this is nothing.

The lioness in her bones roars to life, prowling through her veins, claiming all the space for herself. Antiope’s eyes begin to glow, soon no longer blue as the sky and the sea but as gold and as bright as the sun. Soon, she begins to look more and more like a goddess in mortal skin.

And now with each stretch of her legs she is devouring the earth beneath her, gliding, practically flying, across the ground. Every knoll she crests is a milestone. Every second, every foot she takes is a feat. The lake rises up in the distance, a shining crescent cutting through the swath of green. Already Antiope can feel her magic draining her, and oh how hungry it is. How it feeds off of everything inside her, endlessly.

Mere minutes have gone by, but Antiope is no more than a short sprint to the lake. She has long forgotten the court that she left behind on the other side of the prairie, in favor of greater distances, of better control. But her glorious race slows, until she is trotting and then walking. There is a sheen to her coat that there wasn’t before, and her legs quiver with every step she takes. Her lips curl into a snarl, even as the lioness inside her seems to purr with content.

Damn this place and its way of taking from her what she has had her whole life.

Antiope does not make it to the edge of the lake, shining and sparkling under the sun, but instead she stops beneath the shade of a tree. She presses her shoulder into the rough bark in an effort to keep herself on her feet, closing her blue-again eyes. Oh, if she could find a way to make this world give her magic back to her in its entirety, she would do it in a moment.

@Septimus magic time? *eyes* "speaks"

rallidae | rhiaan